Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

250 Radio Broadcast miles or so. Then New York Harbor will lose its terrors even in the worst weather, to ships properly equipped with radio. It will, we can assume, be as safe for navigation during bad weather as the open sea. In other words, liners or other vessels properly equipped — and once the audio system is in vogue, legislation can be employed to make them carry equipment, exactly as legislation has required all vessels with more than fifty souls on board to carry distress wireless equipment— can race in toward the Lightship, pick up their bearings by radio compass, edge in and make contact with the audio cable, and make the harbor. It was inOctober, 1919, when Commander Stanford C. Hooper, in charge of the radio division, Bureau of Engineering of the Navy, ordered A. Crossley, an expert radio aid, to proceed to New London and undertake the Navy's first major experiments with the audio cable, the promise of which has already been indicated by a long range of theoretical conclusions, along with the development of the equipment necessary, plus a few actual experiments, notably those of Expert Radio Aid R. H. Marriott, who made some experiments in Puget Sound and suggested their development to Commander Hooper. At New London, first a wooden ship was used, a launch. And when it was discovered that there was no shielding effect from the launch's hull, it was found to be practicable to keep the launch within ten feet of the invisible cable, horizontally, and to steer it, of course, either way, to pick it up here or there and to use the device handily. Then a metal ship, a submarine, was used, and the shielding effect of the metal hull was noted, on the action of the coils at either side U. S. S. "ALGORMA" of the ship. The experiments conducted on the G-I demonstrated that its commander could tell on which side of his vessel the cable lay. The strongest signal was always picked up by the coil nearest the cable while the minimum signal was received by the coil farther from the cable. And when the end of the cable was reached both signals eased off. At once, then, the Navy proceeded to larger experiments in the Ambrose Channel. But there was trouble when the longer cable laid there was tested out and investigation proved that the cable had parted, probably in the laying, at precisely fiftytwo places! So the New York Navy Yard went at the business of developing and testing out a decidedly better cable, which, when duly laid and anchored, did all that was expected of it. For the U. S. S. Navy sea-going tug, fitted equipment, steamed at her almiost exactly over the large Algorma, a with receiving master's whim, "audio." The amplifier and switching device used on her were installed in the pilot house and the collector coils were rigged out from the opposite sides of the vessel on a level with the upper deck, about amidships, and about fifteen feet above the water-line. Steaming at right angles to the cable, she could pick up the signals 100 yards from it, and to follow it was like following a hand in the daylight. During the return trip to the city, in fact, the pilot house was blanked off with shutters so that the navigating officer could not see daylight yet he brought the Algorma through the Channel without aid of any sort, with the ship at no time more than fifty yards from the cable and most of the time squarel>' on top of it — this, though the navigating officer had received only three hours of training. And when the de